Contributors

NUAR ALSADIR is the author of the poetry collection More Shadow Than Bird (Salt Publishing, 2012). Her poems and essays have been published in numerous periodicals, including TheKenyon Review, Ploughshares, Slate, The New York Times Magazine, and Tin House. She teaches writing at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and is currently training to become a psychoanalyst.

AMY BRILL’sfiction and nonfiction has appeared or is forthcoming in One Story, The Common, Salon, Real Simple, Redbook, Guernica,and other publications. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she’s been awarded fiction fellowships by the Edward F. Albee Foundation, Jentel, Fundación Valparaiso, the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, the Millay Colony for the Arts, and the American Antiquarian Society. Amy’s first novel, The Movement of Stars, was published by Riverhead Books in 2013.

SUSAN BURTONis at work on a memoir, The Invention of the Teenage Girl, to be published by Random House. Her writing has appeared in publications including The New Yorker, New York magazine, and The New York Times Book Review. She is a former editor of Harper’s and a former producer of This American Life. The feature film Unaccompanied Minors is based upon one of her radio essays. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their two sons.

SARAH SHUN-LIEN BYNUM is the author of two novels, Ms. Hempel Chronicles, a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and Madeleine Is Sleeping, a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award. Her short fiction has been published in The New Yorker, Tin House, The Georgia Review,and The Best American Short Stories 2004 and 2009. In 2010, she was named one of “20 Under 40” fiction writers by The New Yorker. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches in the Graduate Writing Program at Otis College of Art and Design.

LAN SAMANTHA CHANG is the director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. Her fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, Story, and The Best American Short Stories. A 2008 Guggenheim fellow, Chang is the author of Hunger: a Novella and Stories and the novels Inheritance and All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost. She lives in Iowa City with her husband and daughter.

PHOEBE DAMROSCHis the author of Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter (William Morrow), which was a 2007 New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She has written for The New York Times, Food & Wine, and the New YorkDaily News. A graduate of the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College, she now occupies the ground level of a house in Brooklyn with her husband, two sons, and French bulldog.

CLAIRE DEDERER is the author of the bestselling memoir Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Vogue, The Nation, Slate, New York magazine, and many other publications. She lives on an island near Seattle with her family.

JENNIFER GILMORE’s latest novel, The Mothers, was published by Scribner in 2013. She is also the author of Golden Country, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the National Jewish Book Award, and Something Red,a New York Times Notable Book. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Bomb, BookForum, The Huffington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, Salon, Tin House, Vogue,and The Washington Post. She has taught writing and literature at Barnard College, Cornell University, and the New School. Currently she teaches at Princeton University.

JULIA GLASSis the author of the novels And the Dark Sacred Night, The Widower’s Tale, The Whole World Over, and Three Junes (for which she won the 2002 National Book Award). I See You Everywhere, a collection of linked stories, won the 2009 Binghamton University John Gardner Fiction Book Award. She has also won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Her essays have been widely anthologized, most recently in Bound to Last: 30 Writers on Their Most Cherished Book. Glass lives with her two sons and their father in Massachusetts.

ARIELLE GREENBERG is the coauthor, with Rachel Zucker, of the nonfiction book Home/Birth: A Poemic, and the author of the poetry collections My Kafka Century and Given and the chapbooks Shake Her and Farther Down: Songs from the Allergy Trials. She is the coeditor of three anthologies: with Rachel Zucker, Starting Today: 100 Poems for Obama’s First 100 Days and Women Poets on Mentorship: Efforts and Affections; and with Lara Glenum, Gurlesque: the new grrly, grotesque, burlesque poetics. Twice featured in Best American Poetry, she lives with her family in a small town in rural Maine.

LAUREN GROFF is the author of Arcadia, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, bestseller, and finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction. Her first novel, The Monsters of Templeton, was short-listed for the Orange Award for New Writers. She has a collection of short fiction called Delicate Edible Birds, and her stories have won Pushcart and O. Henry Prizes and have appeared in publications including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, One Story, Tin House, and Ploughshares, as well as two editions of the Best American Short Stories anthology. She lives in Gainesville, Florida, with her husband and two sons.

ELEANOR HENDERSON is the author of the novel Ten Thousand Saints, which was named one of the Top 10 Books of 2011 by The New York Times and a finalist for the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction from the Los Angeles Times. Her stories and essays have appeared in Poets & Writers, The Wall Street Journal, Virginia Quarterly Review, AGNI, Salon, The New York Times,and Best American Short Stories. An assistant professor in the Department of Writing at Ithaca College, she lives in Ithaca, New York, with her husband and two sons.

CRISTINA HENRÍQUEZ is the author of the forthcoming novel The Book of Unknown Americans, as well as the novel The World in Half and the short story collection Come Together, Fall Apart, which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The American Scholar, Glimmer Train, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, AGNI,and the Virginia Quarterly Review, where she was named one of “Fiction’s New Luminaries.” A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she is also the recipient of an Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation Award. Henríquez lives outside of Chicago with her husband, daughter, and son.

AMY HERZOG’splays include After the Revolution, The Great God Pan, Belleville, and 4000 Miles, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of an Obie Award for the Best New American Play. A recipient of the Whiting Writers’ Award, the Benjamin H. Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award, the Joan and Joseph F. Cullman Award for Extraordinary Creativity, and the New York Times Outstanding Playwright Award, Herzog has taught playwriting at Bryn Mawr and Yale.

ANN HOODis the author of thirteen books, including the bestsellers The Knitting Circle, The Red Thread, and Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine; the memoir Comfort: A Journey Through Grief, which was selected as a New York Times Editors’ Choice and as one of the top ten nonfiction books of 2008 by Entertainment Weekly; and the critically acclaimed short story collection An Ornithologist’s Guide to Life. She has won two Pushcart Prizes, the Paul Bowles Prize for Short Fiction, and Best American Spiritual Writing, Best American Travel Writing, and Best Food Writing Awards. Her new novel, The Obituary Writer, was an O, The Oprah Magazine Best New Book of April 2013 and chosen as one of the Best Books of 2013 by Amazon.

SARAH JEFFERIS is the author of the poetry collection Forgetting the Salt (Foothills Publishing, 2008). Her poems and nonfiction have appeared in the American Literary Review,the Mississippi Review, Icon, The Hollins Critic, The Patterson Literary Review, Icarus, The Healing Muse, and other journals. She holds an M.A. from Hollins University, an M.F.A. from Cornell University, and a Ph.D from SUNY Binghamton. She is working on a novel and a second book of poetry. A professor of creative writing and women’s studies for thirteen years, she lives in Ithaca, New York, with her wife and their two daughters.

HEIDI JULAVITSis the author of four novels, most recently The Vanishers. Her fiction and nonfiction has appeared in Harper’s, McSweeney’s, Elle,and The New York Times, among other places. She’s the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, a founding editor of The Believer magazine, and an associate professor at Columbia University. Along with Leanne Shapton and Sheila Heti, she is coeditor of Women in Clothes: Why We Wear What We Wear (2014).

MARY BETH KEANEgraduated from Barnard College and received an M.F.A from the University of Virginia. Her debut novel, The Walking People, was a runner-up at the 2010 PEN/Hemingway Awards, and in 2011, Julia Glass selected her as one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 under 35.” Her second novel, Fever (Scribner) was published in the spring of 2013, with foreign editions forthcoming from Simon & Schuster U.K., Edizioni Piemme in Italy, and Presses de la Cité in France. Keane lives in Rockland County, New York, with her husband and their two sons.

MARIE MYUNG-OK LEEis an essayist and novelist. She is the author of the novel Somebody’s Daughter, and her current novel is forthcoming in 2015 from Simon & Schuster. She has been a recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, the Robert & Margaret MacColl-Johnson and Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Fellowships, and fellowship residencies at Yaddo and MacDowell. Her work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Witness, Five Chapters, Slate, Salon, The New York Times, and The Nation, and she is a regular contributor to The Atlantic. She teaches writing at Columbia University.

EDAN LEPUCKIis a staff writer for The Millions and the author of the novel California. Her short fiction has been published in McSweeney’s, Narrative magazine, and Meridian, among others. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she is the founder of Writing Workshops Los Angeles.

HEIDI PITLORhas been the series editor of The Best American Short Stories since 2007. In 2015, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will publish 100 Years of “The Best American Short Stories, which Heidi also edited. She is the author of the novel The Birthdays. Her second novel, We All Fall Down, is forthcoming from Algonquin in 2015. She lives outside Boston with her husband and twins.

JOANNA RAKOFFis the author of the novel A Fortunate Age, which won the 2010 Goldberg Prize for Outstanding Debut Fiction, and the memoir My Salinger Year (Knopf, 2014). She has written for The New York Times, Vogue, Marie Claire, and many other publications. She lives in Cambridge with her two children.

JANE ROPERis the author of a memoir, Double Time: How I Survived—and Mostly Thrived—Through the First Three Years of Mothering Twins (St. Martin’s Press, 2012),and a novel, Eden Lake (Last Light Studio, 2011). Jane received her M.F.A. in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and her writing has appeared in Salon, Poets & Writers, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She lives in the Boston area with her husband and twin daughters.

DANZY SENNA is the author of the national bestselling novel Caucasia,winner of the American Library Association’s Alex Award, the novel Symptomatic, and the memoir Where Did You Sleep Last Night?: A Personal History. Her latest work, a story collection titled You Are Free, was published by Riverhead Books in 2011. A recipient of the Whiting Writers’ Award, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband, the novelist Percival Everett, and their sons, Henry and Miles.

DANI SHAPIROis the bestselling author of the memoirs Devotion and Slow Motion, and five novels, including Black & White and Family History. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Ploughshares, Tin House, One Story, Elle, Vogue, The New York Times Book Review, and many other publications. She has taught in the writing programs at Columbia University, NYU, the New School, Brooklyn College, and Wesleyan University. Her new book, Still Writing: The Pleasures and Perils of a Creative Life,was published in 2013. She lives with her family in Litchfield County, Connecticut.

ANNA SOLOMONis the author of the novel The Little Bride,a Boston Globe bestseller. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, MoRE, One Story, Ploughshares, The Georgia Review, Harvard Review,and elsewhere. Her short stories have twice been awarded the Pushcart Prize. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she lives with her husband and two children in Providence, Rhode Island.

CHERYL STRAYEDis the author of the number one New York Times bestseller Wild, which was chosen for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 and has been made into a film starring Reese Witherspoon. She is also the author of the novel Torch and the New York Times bestseller Tiny Beautiful Things, a collection of the “Dear Sugar” columns she wrote for The Rumpus. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine, Vogue, Tin House, Creative Nonfiction, The Sun, The Best American Essays, Best New American Voices,and elsewhere. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two children.

SARAH A. STRICKLEY is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, an Ohio Arts Council grant, a Glenn Schaeffer Prize from the International Institute of Modern Letters, and other honors. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Oxford American magazine, A Public Space, Harvard Review, Gulf Coast, The Barcelona Review, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is currently a doctoral candidate in the University of Cincinnati’s Department of English and Comparative Literature. She lives in Cincinnati with her husband, the writer Ian Stansel, and their daughter, Simone Esme.

RACHEL JAMISON WEBSTER is the author of the poetry collection September (TriQuarterly Books, 2013), and has published poems and essays in many journals and anthologies, including Poetry, The Paris Review, The Southern Review, The Madison Review, and Not a Muse. She teaches at Northwestern University, where she is artist in residence, and edits an online anthology of international poetry, UniVerse. For several years, she worked with Chicago’s first lady Maggie Daley to design and teach writing workshops for city teens. In this capacity, she edited two anthologies of writing by youth, Alchemy and Paper Atrium.

GINA ZUCKER has published fiction and nonfiction in journals such as Tin House, Salt Hill, Self, Elle, Glamour, GQ, Cosmopolitan, Rolling Stone,and Babble. Her work has been anthologized several times, including in Fantastic Women, published by Tin House Books. She directs the Writers’ Forum reading series at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.